The Dawn of

Online Education
The first decade of
My Online Education World
1980-1990
Morten Flate Paulsen

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 The Dawn of Online Education

The first decade of

My Online Education World
1980-2020

This is the first book in a four-book chronicle of personal anecdotes, experiences, and
reflections on people, events, technology, and pedagogy that influenced four decades of my
online education work.
The narrative is based on my international practice with online education as a pioneer,
student, teacher, course designer, system developer, administrator, board member, researcher,
professor, author, editor, reviewer, entrepreneur, and innovator.
The story progresses along with my work for NKI Distance Education in Norway, the
American Center for the Study of Distance Education, the Athabasca University in Canada,
the European Association for Distance Learning (EADL), the European Distance and E-
learning Network (EDEN), the Universidade Aberta in Portugal, the Nordic open online
Academy (NooA), the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the
International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE).

The anecdotes also include reflections from visits to thirty countries where I have given
presentations about online education.

By Morten Flate Paulsen

www.linkedin.com/in/mfpaulsen/

Publisher: NooA, Kirkegata 7, 3770 Kragerø, Norway

This book was published in 2024 under the Creative Commons - Attribution International 4.0
(CC-BY) License. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
ISBN 978-82-693537-0-9 (PDF version)

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Table of contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 4
The pioneering 1980s.............................................................................................................................. 6
1980 - Graduating for online education?................................................................................................ 8
1981 - Working with microcomputers .................................................................................................. 13
1982 - Gaining teaching experiences .................................................................................................... 16
1983 - Starting Norway's first private ICT College ................................................................................ 19
1984 - Changing perspectives ............................................................................................................... 23
1985 - Discovering modems and bulletin board systems ..................................................................... 27
1986 - Designing the first LMS for distance education ......................................................................... 32
1987 - Teaching Norway's first distance students online ..................................................................... 37
1988 - Attending ICDE's World Conference in Oslo .............................................................................. 44
1989 - Gaining international attention ................................................................................................. 54
Reflections in a dire, Covid dominated 2020 ........................................................................................ 61
Introducing the optimistic 1990s .......................................................................................................... 63

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Introduction

My Online Education World chronicle emerged as an intriguing, but daunting, idea during
2019. First, when I attended the black-tie dinner hosted by Baroness Martha Lane Fox for the
50th anniversary of the UK Open University. Again, when I prepared a keynote on forty
years of innovations in online education at the Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University's
40th anniversary in August 2019.

I gradually realized that I have four decades of online education experiences and many
anecdotes that I had time to share after stepping down as Acting Secretary General of the
International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE). I also realized that My
Online Education World was formed by an unprecedented technological development,
hundreds of good people I met, and my experiences with ICT and pedagogy in Norway and
scores of other countries.

My ambition was to publish ten relevant recollections, year by year. The approach was
inspired by Ketil Bjørnstad. The multi-talented Norwegian pianist, composer, journalist, and
author - who shared personal anecdotes, celebrity encounters, and newsworthy moments in
his monumental chronicle Verden som var min (The world that was mine). Hundred pages
per year, one volume per decade. Before I started this chronicle, I had read his observations
and views from the sixties and seventies. So, I continued reading his next four volumes as my
writing progressed with the following decades.

Bjørnstad's world was especially interesting to me since we grew up in the same era, region,
and cultural setting. In the same way, I hope my recollections are of interest to online
educators around the world, to my dear family and friends as well as the countless people I
encountered virtually and face-to-face in My Online Education World.

From the start, my ambition was to finish my recollections of the 1980s by the end of 2020.
Then, focus on one decade per year and finish the project by the end of 2023.

I started to publish preliminary versions of the anecdotes at www.nooa.no/my-online-

education-world/ and in social media. Which resulted in positive and useful feedback. And

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encouragement to update and compile the anecdotes in a book. So, I decided to revise and
publish the anecdotes as four open access books during 2024. One book per decade.

Fortunately, I remembered and had access to much more relevant information than expected.
People close to me claim that I never trash a document before I copy it. So, I have kept a lot
of printed books, proceedings, articles, reports, and printouts. Digital archives of old e-mails,
reports, publications, presentations, and entries from the Windows 3.1 calendar I started to
use in the nineties.

The Wayback Machine is an impressive resource. Archiving most of the websites we worked
with in the second half of the nineties. The Norwegian National Library has a valuable online
archive with hundreds of Norwegian newspapers, books, and journals including my name.
And over one hundred of my publications are listed in Google Scholar.

Web-based, year-by-year chronicles of events helped me relate the anecdotes to current

Norwegian and international events. So, the minutes concluding each year are chosen as
formative events in My Online Education World. They are also meant to be reminders of the
zeitgeist. The spirit, politics, technology, and culture that defined each year.

Based on all the available material, I’ve chosen anecdotes that recall good personal memories
and include people and events that influenced me and the development of Norwegian and
international online education.

Important archives that jogged my memories are illustrated in the timeline below. And it
strikes me that so far only a few of these archives can be accessed by generative artificial
intelligence. So, how will the history of online education be presented when AI systems soon
ingest my open access publications?

Timeline of my most useful printed (red) and digital (green) archives

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The pioneering 1980s

Edvard Munch’s monumental painting "The Sun" expresses the majestic sunrise in Kragerø. The central work of Munch’s
world-famous artwork at the Oslo University Aula. It may be used to symbolize the dawn of online education and the
university's fundamental task — enlightenment.

The first book in My Online Education World compiles anecdotes from the pioneering 1980s.
Anecdotes chronicled during covid isolation in 2020. The decade that irrevocably hurled me
into many unforeseen adult opportunities and challenges. The decade that indeed changed a
modest Norway towards a more self-conscious, open, and rich country. Defined technology
developments that spurred a paradigm shift in distance education. So remarkable to sum up
the decade realizing that a century has passed since my father was born. Reading worrying
news about the pandemic, US developments, and Brexit at the end of 2020. The warmest year
on record in Norway. A year that certainly will define the years to come.

In 1980, distance education was synonymous with correspondence courses, educational radio,
and television. It was the dawn of the online education era. The eighties totally transformed
our perception of distance education. The major driver of the development was new
technology: PCs, modems, and learning management systems. In retrospect, low-capacity
technology without graphic and colour interfaces. But a technology upholding Moore’s law
by doubling processing and storage capacity every second year. Foreshadowed the ability to
process digital sound and video. We introduced the term ICT for Information and
Communication Technology. The Internet infrastructure reached leading universities, a few
pioneers started to exchange e-mail and the first online courses were introduced.

The second half of the decade introduced a remarkable era for online education in Norway.
When I initiated the country’s first learning management system and online courses. Spent a

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fortune on long-distance calls as an online student and teacher at Connect Ed in the US. Saw
King Olav and prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland at the World Conference for Distance
Education. Hosted by the Norwegian Association for Distance Education at the University of
Oslo. The International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) opened its
permanent secretariat in Oslo. Developments that clearly defined my online education world.

In the eighties, I was one of many Norwegians who viewed the US as the land of
opportunities. Scientific excellence, NASA, high-tech companies, incredible new software,
reliable news, impressive athletics, entertaining movies, and music we loved. A country I
toured extensively as a tourist. And visited several times to learn more about technology and
online education from the North American pioneers. Inspired by technology innovations and
ICT entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs. And Bill Gates, who I interviewed in a 30-minute program
on Norwegian TV.

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1980 - Graduating for online education?
Student life
In 1980, I graduated from the Norwegian Institute of
Technology (NTH, now NTNU) in Trondheim as a
shy, introvert, mediocre, but diligent student. I
remember we were 180 students in the class when
the only female student dropped her knitting needle
on the floor. The awkward lecturer wearing his
sweater inside out. Spending two hours by the
blackboard, unable to solve his own mathematical
assignment. The often arrogant, sometimes brilliant,
and always rabid professor Jens Glad Balchen.
Norway’s first professor of cybernetics, who many
years later was commemorated on the tail wing of a
Norwegian Air Shuttle. On that plane towards
Trondheim, I wondered if any online educators
would be featured in such a prominent place.

I saw my first microprocessors and fibre optic cables.

Picture of my first digital photo printout. The fifty
shades of grey were made by various keyboard
characters.
error messages the next morning.
Got a printout of my first digital photography.
Learned Fortran programming in front of a punch
card machine. Delivered stacks of cards at the
counter for compilation and picked up all the printed

Most students substituted their manual slide rules with calculators from Texas Instruments or
Hewlett Packard. I had the HP 21, which could be programmed with 49 command lines. Just
enough for my friend Bjørn Bakken and my younger brother Frode to simulate five dices to
play Yahtzee.

Long-distance calls to Oslo were expensive and the telephone charges were even higher
during work hours. So, every Monday at 17.00, my father called me at my landlord Fru
Hagen's telephone.

To add extra income to the student loan, I worked during vacations at the booming
minicomputer company Norsk Data and the Norwegian state telecom monopoly (Televerket).
At Norsk Data, we worked with the SIBAS database software. At Televerket, we measured
how fast (300-4800 bits per second) future modem users could transfer data over ordinary
telephone lines. Contemplated if people ever would need such services.

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US road trip
Private photo with Dallas police officer
I had few distinct plans. So, I embarked on a
summer journey with my childhood friend and
1975-76 Interrail companion, Atle Gunnari. Four
countries in two months: USA, Graceland,
Mexico, and Disneyland. We transported a
Chevrolet Nova from New York to Dallas for a
driveaway service. And were frisked by
intimidating police officers at the destination.
Alerted by a sixteen-year-old girl who was alone
in the house. Checking our papers, they realized
we had a wrong address to the owner of the car.
So, they cheered up and helped us find the way.

We hiked Grand Canyon all the way down to the Colorado River and up again in one day.
Continued to Las Vegas, San Diego, and Tijuana. Flew from Los Angeles to Hawaii. Surfed
at Waikiki Beach, snorkelled with tropical fish near Diamond Head, and visited Pearl
Harbour. Drove around Oahu in a white Jeep Wrangler.

Stayed a few days in a Santa Cruz collective with health-conscious people who only ate and
smoked stuff they cultivated themselves. Together with Anna and Paula from Italy. Wonder
if they remember the Volkswagen van excursion with Kim and her hippie friend, Gey. The
excursion that culminated with his bamboo and coconut concert up in the huge redwood tree.

Later, on the Greyhound bus, we realized that we could only afford San Francisco's cheapest
hotel room. It turned out to be in a gay hotel on Market Street. So, I was more than happy to
arrive hand in hand with Anna. But disappointed when I asked for directions to Silicon
Valley. To my astonishment, none of the locals had heard about this epicentre of ICT.

Continued from San Francisco to Eugene and Seattle as incumbent President Jimmy Carter
was campaigning against Ronald Reagan. On July 22, we were on the road towards Seattle
when Mount St. Helen again erupted with destructive force. The sky was dark with smoke
and the bus driver used the windshield wipers to see through the ashes coming down from the
sky.

My Mycron thesis
Returning home, I bought a NOK 35,000 one-room apartment at Ammerud in Oslo. There, I
applied Televerket for a landline telephone and was lucky enough to get one after a few
months. I bought Pink Floyd's 1979 LP The Wall and played We don't Need No Education
repeatedly in stereo on my gramophone.

In the fall, I finished my master’s thesis in cybernetics at the microcomputer company

Mycron in Oslo. Headed by the serial entrepreneur Lars Monrad Krohn who declined an offer
to become Norway’s second professor in cybernetics. A position which was filled by my
advisor, Olav Landsverk.

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I interviewed Lars Monrad Krohn for educational TV in 1989. About his entrepreneurial
experiences from Norsk Data, Mycron, and Tiki Data. See a brief clip of the interview here.

As part of my thesis work, I designed and

built the depicted central processing unit
(CPU) for a microcomputer with the Intel
8086 microprocessor and 8087 arithmetic
co-processor. I wrote the thesis with the
very early word processor Mytekst
(developed for Mycron by Haakon Wiig)
and saved it on an eight-inch floppy disk.

Among my successful colleagues in

Mycron were Terje Tinglum and Ingar
Rune Steinsland, who developed CPM 86
together with Gary Kildall in the US
Private photo of the CPU I developed as part of my thesis.
company Digital Research. We all
expected it would be the operating system
for the planned IBM PC.

And I was lucky enough to make a 30-minute TV interview with Bill Gates about this in
1989.

Arild Haraldsen also wrote about it in his Norwegian article Den sanne historien om PCens
historie (The true history of the PC).

Screenshot of Arild Haraldsen’s Google translated article in Digi.no 15.10.2001.

Excerpt from my TV interview with Bill Gates

Morten Flate Paulsen: In Norway, your company Microsoft is best known for its MS-DOS
operating system. What is the true story behind IBM's choice of MS-DOS over CPM for its
IBM PC personal computer?
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William Gates: Well, when IBM was going to make their PC, they thought about the whole
market. At that time (1980) there were many microcomputers: e.g. The Apple and
Commodore machines, which used our BASIC translator. The CPM machines had
approximately 20 percent of that market.
When IBM first came to us, they intended to make an 8-bit machine, like the other
microcomputers on the market at the time, and they were only interested in using our BASIC
translator. We convinced them that they should go for a 16-bit machine instead. This would
be more powerful, and we believed that it should have an operating system based on the use
of magnetic disks.
In fact, I sent them to Digital Research first, to Gary Kildall, to see if Gary had finished the
16-bit version of CPM. But unfortunately, they did not get in touch with him, and various
other problems arose during the negotiations there.
Be that as it may: We then decided to go in ourselves and seize this opportunity to create a
better operating system. And a month later, we submitted our system to IBM, with MS-DOS.
We actually already had a system in house, made by Tim Patterson, which we could use as a
basis for MS-DOS - which was lucky for us, given the tight time frame we had at the time.
MFP: Wasn't that the system they called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System)?
WG: Well, Tim had several names for his system: QDOS and 86-DOS were two of the
names he used. But we quickly had the name changed to MS-DOS when we took it over.
MFP: Would you then say that it was purely by chance that MS-DOS "won" over CPM?
That if e.g. Had Gary Kildall been present at the decisive moment, perhaps CPM would have
been chosen, and not MS-DOS?
WG: No, we had decided that we should have this assignment, and not Digital Research. And
we played a leading role in the development of the hardware: I chose the character set, we
chose the graphic resolution, etc. It wasn't entirely easy - e.g. we set as a requirement that the
machine must be able to work both with and without magnetic disks. Besides, we were short
on time, as already mentioned, and the 16-bit version of CPM was not available at this time.
So, it was clear that IBM would choose us.
Here I can mention that in the beginning it was more complicated. When the machine came
out, IBM offered it with both MS-DOS and CPM - i.e. the 16-bit version, which Digital
Research completed approx. 6 months later. We then had a period of a few years when
nobody knew what would become the standard. I travelled around speaking for MS-DOS,
while companies like Victor (which few will remember today) were more CPM oriented.
Only after a couple of years was everything clarified. People often think that things were
simpler before, but that is not always the case - they could be just as complicated then as they
are now!

1980 minutes
The events included in my yearly minutes are chosen as formative events in My Online
Education World. They are also meant to be reminders of the zeitgeist. The spirit, politics,
technology, and culture that defined each year.

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The yearly minutes also list the publications and presentations I recall from my research and
development work.

• February 11. Pizza Grandiosa was introduced in Norway.

• February 13. The Lake Placid Winter Olympics started, and American Eric Heiden won
all five gold medals in speed skating.
• March 27. 123 people died when the Norwegian offshore platform Alexander Kielland
tilted in a storm.
• April 20. Norway decided to boycott the Moscow Summer Olympics along with 64 other
nations.
• May 18. Mount St. Helen erupted and fifty-seven people died.
• July 29. The UN general assembly decided that Palestinians had the right to establish
their own state.
• November 4. Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent President Jimmy Carter and was elected
US President.
• December 8. John Lennon was murdered outside his New York City apartment building.

One 1980 publication in Norwegian

Paulsen, M. F. 1980. Hovedoppgave: Ko-prosessering for Mikroprosessor. Trondheim: NTH.

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1981 - Working with microcomputers
Mycron and the IBM PC
After finishing my master’s thesis at Mycron, I
continued to work there for six months as a hardware
engineer. The company's future looked bright, so
unfortunately, I bought shares in the company. How
could I foresee that IBM would choose MS-DOS over
CPM 86? And the introduction of the Osborne 1
portable computer and the IBM PC in 1981?

Analyses and acquisition of shares are often more

successful in hindsight, as this brief video clip from
my 1989 interview with Bill Gates focusing on MS-
Screenshot of my video interview with Bill Gates
DOS indicates.

I bought my first home computer. Considered the Sinclair ZX80 but chose the Commodore
VIC 20, which foreshadowed the more successful Commodore 64. I later added a cassette
tape recorder to store programs and learned to program in Basic.

Looking back, I realize that many of Norway's most talented ICT personalities started their
careers in Mycron. Just to mention a few I worked with: Ulf Motzfeldt, Dag Bøyesen,
Christian Lied, Vigleik Eide, Monica Nøkleby, and Ivar Andersen. Stein Bergsmark was
active in the climate debate and Gro Jørgensen co-founded Tiki Data for the school market
and started CyberBook - a company that provided online learning resources.

Teaching in the Navy

In July, Prince Charles and Princess Diana married in London. And I was called to do my
military service in the Norwegian Navy. It started with a three-week boot camp at Madla in
Stavanger. Fortunately, I was soon transferred to SMK (Sjømilitære korps). The Navy's
vocational boarding school in Horten. There, I spent one of my best years as a quartermaster
and teacher, along with my university classmates Olav Stokke, Bjørn Hopland, Christopher
Lund, and John Harald Bergheim. Brynjulf Freberg was a frequent visitor at the old military
villa we shared at Karljohansvern. As quartermasters, we had privileged access to cleaning
maids, windsurf boards, and sailing boats. But we worked bloody hard as teachers and duty
officers.

As duty officers during weekends, we were responsible for the

200 students at the military boarding school. This was especially
tough when they returned from the local discos and pubs. Often
hard to wake them up the morning after they received their
monthly payment. But we learned that they respected and cared
about us - because we cared about them.

I fondly remember my 24th birthday. When I showed up in the

Private birthday photo classroom, it was decorated with petunia flowers in half-litre

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beer mugs. Respectively stolen from the school's flower bed and the local pub. At lunch,
about 200 male and 10 female students sang happy birthday in the cafeteria.

With no teaching experiences, I was thrown into teaching mathematics, chemistry, and
electronics. The students were nearly my age and not especially motivated to learn theory.
So, I soon realized that we needed some action in class. Chemistry became more interesting
with explosive demonstrations. Lab sessions were more fun when we grilled hotdogs at 230
volts, injecting electric cords in each end. We learned that the sausages were well done when
the 10 ampere fuses cut. It probably went too far when I ignited a leftover military
thunderflash in the teacher room during lunch break.

The school had several Swedish ABC 80

microcomputers, and we connected them in a
local area network (LAN). I expect it was one of
the very first LANs in Norwegian schools.
There, we developed our first online education
application. A competitive arithmetic game,
where the students tried to solve as many
assignments as possible in a limited time. It
became popular and the competition to be on the
top ten list was fierce.
Private photo of Olav Stokke in front of an ABC 80
If not on duty, I went to Oslo during weekends
with my first car, an old Renault 5. Olav helped me install a car computer and attach sensors
to measure the flow of gas and rotation speed of the wheels so that the computer could show
the current and the average gas consumption and speed of the car. Le Renault did not like
steep hills but gave a special feeling of freedom.

Freedom of choice, however, was not abundant in the Norwegian society. In December,
Minister of Culture Lars Roar Langslet announced a list of providers that were accepted for
testing local radio and television broadcasting. Ending the Norwegian state broadcasting
monopoly.

1981 minutes
• January 1. Greece became a member of the EU.
• February 4. Gro Harlem Brundtland became the first female Prime Minister in Norway.
• February 22. Two men were shot at the Hadeland murders by a Nazi-inspired three-men
group called "Germanic Arms of Norway".
• March 8. Arnfinn Nesset admitted killing 22 patients at Orkdal's age and nursing home
with poison.
• March 30. Ronald Reagan was shot and injured.
• May 10. Francois Mitterrand became president of France.
• May 13. Pope John Paul 2. was shot and seriously injured in Rome.
• June 7. Israeli fighters bombed a nuclear reactor in Baghdad.
• July 29. Prince Charles and Princess Diana married in London.
• September 9. Norway beat England 2-1 in soccer as reported by the renowned reporter
Bjørge Lillelien in this famous audio clip.
• October 27. A Soviet submarine was stuck near Karlskrona in Sweden.

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One 1981 publication in English

Bergsmark, S., M. F. Paulsen, C. Lied, and U. Motzfelt. 1981. DIM 2001 CPU Module: OEM
User's Manual. Oslo: Mycron. pages: 70.

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1982 - Gaining teaching experiences
SMK highlights
The navy officers in SMK (Sjømilitære korps) gathered in the large living room of our villa
to socialize, watch VHS videos, and see Oddvar Brå break his legendary ski pole fighting for
the World Championship in Oslo.

We served beer from the bar and called the private soldiers on duty when we needed more
wood for the fireplace. Frequent discussion topics among the officers were Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War between the UK and Argentina. It started when
Argentina occupied the Falkland Islands in April and ended in June when the Argentine
forces surrendered.

It was a special day. King Olav visited SMK. We were all lined up in navy uniforms and the
King took time to inspect and greet everyone. My body hurt from lined up immobility. My
soul was pleased with the royal handshake.

The open day for the local community and student families started with the traditional
ceremony of hoisting the Norwegian flag. Maybe Thomas was among the students in the
parade. At least his parents and older sister, Astrid, were watching. The handsome young
woman who would mean so much to me later in life.

After two years of schooling, the SMK students continued with two years of military training
at the Haakonsvern naval base near Bergen. As their teachers, we got a military flight to a
guided tour of the base and the submarines. I was not intrigued to travel anywhere by
submarine but inspired by the opportunity to hop on free empty seats on military flights to
northern Norway. Christoffer Lund and I used the opportunity to seek the midnight sun and
visited Tromsø and Bodø during summer vacation.

At the end of the school year, my military service ended. The students celebrated it
traditionally by throwing their teachers, wearing quartermaster uniforms, into the cold Oslo
fjord. It changed my interpretation of the word wetsuit.

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NKI Distance Education
In the spring, I applied for a position at the
Norwegian correspondence institute NKI
that was announced in Aftenposten as shown
in the figure. September 1st, after a
successful job interview with Solveig
Grepperud, I started as head of a project
group which should investigate and develop
new educational initiatives related to
computer technology.

NKI produced a lot of written course

material for their correspondence students
and had a typewriter pool of women who
Facsimile of job announcement in Aftenposten, May 6, 1982 typed from dictaphones and handwritten
manuscripts.

One benefit was that the job came with affordable rent to one of the ten apartments NKI
predisposed to in Limsteinveien near Bekkestua in the outskirts of Oslo.

Teaching Arab students in Oslo

NKI had international ambitions through ownership in ISOT - the International School of
Technology. One of several ISOT-projects was a training programme in electronics for
Syrian and Saudi Arabian engineers. It was part of a development program initiated by the
Saudi Presidency of Civil Aviation (PCA) for Saudi technical personnel at the new airport in
Jeddah.

As I recall it, NKI’s project manager Stein Tore Jenssen called on a Friday to tell me that the
coming week's teacher had withdrawn. Could I please step in and teach them PDP 11
assembly programming - in English? He argued that, since I knew some English and some
assembly programming and had the entire weekend to prepare, there was no way I could
decline. It was tough to teach a new subject in English for forty hours that week, but I made
it. After a while, I appreciated that Stein Tore dared me to push my limits.

BBC microcomputers
In the summer, NKI bought 400 BBC microcomputers for educational purposes. The BBC
Micro was developed by Acorn for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, which also included
educational TV programs, textbooks, and software. NKI's intention was to use the computers
for its computer courses and to get a foothold in the Norwegian school market. This effort
was not especially successful since Tiki Data and IBM took over that market.

I was, however, fortunate to use the BBC micro and the additional resources for personal
learning and some classroom ICT courses that I developed and taught for banks and
insurance companies. I learned assembly programming with the computer’s popular
microprocessor 6502 and published a compendium with program examples and exercises.

17
1982 minutes
• February 18. The World Ski Championships started in Oslo. The moment Oddvar Brå
broke his ski pole made an unforgettable impression on Norway’s national soul.
• April 2. The ten-week Falklands War between UK and Argentina started.
• July 1. The Chinese population reached one billion.
• October 1. Helmut Kohl became Chancellor in West Germany.
• October 21. The Norwegian jazz singer Radka Toneff died.

One 1982 publication

Paulsen, M. F. 1982. Mikrodatamaskinen: Praktiske Øvelser med 6502 assembler. Stabekk:

NKI-forlaget.

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1983 - Starting Norway's first private ICT
College
ICT technology and courses
The workforce needed more ICT competence, and NKI
organized several introductory ICT courses for businesses
and organizations in the Oslo area. I used to teach these
courses to employees in banks, teachers, physicians, and
dentists.

Used flip-overs, overhead projector, and preproduced

plastic slides for the next ten years. Until I started
lecturing with my Windows 93 laptop. First connected to a
flat, translucent, black-and-white LCD slate I used on the
overhead projector. Then to a portable LCD projector I
brought along with my first PowerPoint presentations in
the 1990s.

Few educators foresaw the immense impact PowerPoint

and LCD projectors would have on teaching, lecturing,
Facsimile of advertisement for ICT courses
and presentations. But flip-overs and white boards are still
in Aftenposten, January 13, 1983 useful.

The picture shows an advertisement from Aftenposten in January 1983, including some of my
NKI colleagues. Oddvar Bentsen, Anne Kjeksrud, Helge Strømsø, Bjørn Kristiansen, and
Noelle Bø. It also presents the BBC micros, black-and-white TV-monitors, and cassette
recorders we used in the courses.

Carnivals in Brazil and Norway

In February, my neighbour and friend Arthur Knutzen invited me to the Carnival in Rio de
Janeiro. He worked for the Scandinavian Airlines and had access to affordable flights. He
snail mailed postcards to dozens of friends whenever he travelled and always packed the Oslo
telephone directory to find their addresses.

It was an unbelievable week of experiences. We enjoyed body surfing and getting distracted
and mugged by topless girls in Copacabana. We ran from shooting in the crowds outside
Maracanã Stadium and rode a yellow Volkswagen Beetle taxi with an exploding tire in a
tunnel towards Corcovado. Most memorable were the penetrating samba rhythms that heated
up a frozen Norwegian. The experiences started a lifelong fascination with Brazil - a country
that ever since has a special place in my heart.

Back in Norway, I met my life companion. Marith Helene Friisvold from the town of Molde.
At a party in my colleague Petter Tjelle's neighbouring apartment in Limsteinveien. We
started jogging together, ran the Oslo Marathon inspired by the two legendary Norwegian
runners Grete Waitz and Ingrid Kristiansen. Had trips to Agadir and Teneriffe.

19
We also attended the first out of three Oslo Carnivals. Unfortunately, the cheerful but
unrestrained carnival crowds did too much damage to establish a sustainable carnival
tradition in Norway.

ICT summer schools

Facsimiles of advertisements in Aftenposten for NKI’s ICT Summer School May 20 and EDB Skolen’s summer camp May 5,
1983

In the spring, I initiated EDB Sommerskole. A series of weeklong courses for youth who
wanted to learn programming in BASIC with the BBC microcomputers. A newsworthy
initiative announced in and covered by both national and local newspapers.

Our competitors, EDB skolen, organized their three-week Summer Campus in Grimstad. I
guess serial entrepreneur Jan Sollid Storehaug regrets that they started one week later than us.

I engaged my brother Frode to help with the summer school. We filled a Ford Transit with
computers and TV monitors to arrange courses at the Panorama Summer Hotel in Oslo,
Dombås Youth Hostel, and Skagerak Vacation House in Grimstad.

We organized barbecues, bonfires, and windsurfing. But I will never again agree to have 24/7
responsibility for teaching and social activities for youth on vacation away from their parents.

20
NKI Datahøgskolen - Norway's first private ICT College
NKI decided to establish NKI
Datahøgskolen as a private ICT college in
1983. The first three employees were Bjørn
Kristiansen, Oddvar Bentsen, and me. We
transformed the factory building at
Grenseveien 107 into a school building with
auditoriums, classrooms, and sixty terminals
for our HP 3000 minicomputer. I vividly
recall using a shovel and wheelbarrow to
clear the basement from crushed bricks and
dirt to make room for the minicomputer.
Appropriate work for a hardware engineer.

When the first sixty full-time and 120 part-

time students enrolled in September, the
Facsimile of advertisement for Datahøgskolen in Aftenposten, college was still partly a construction site.
May 20, 1983. We employed Hege Bjarkholm, Lillian
Askautrud, Einar Sandvik, and Mona
Sætrang in the administration and several part-time teachers with experience from the ICT-
field. Agnar Nilsen was engaged as ICT Manager to take care of the HP 3000 computer
system we used for COBOL programming. And word processing with HP SLATE, which the
students called HP LATE.

The students were motivated, challenging, and close to my age. We were a young team with
more enthusiasm than experience. We learned how hard and rewarding it was to be
entrepreneurs. And how difficult it was to establish a private college that challenged the
public college system. However, without this enthusiastic team, the college would not exist.

The toughest shock came when the

Ministry of Culture and Science declined
our application to join the scheme for
public student loans. Because we primarily
used part time-teachers. When the news
broke, I remember welcoming the TV news
reporter Audgunn Oltedal from NRK
Dagsrevyen. She retorted, "I'm not here to
be nice". However, Tore Krogdahl argued
well on behalf of NKI on Dagsrevyen - the
most watched news program on Norwegian
television. Aftenposten, the leading
Norwegian newspaper, broke the negative
news on November 24, 1983.
Facsimile of article about declined student loans in Aftenposten
November 24, 1983
We called an open meeting for all students
who expected to receive student loans. Standing in front of more than one hundred hostile
students in a stuffed auditorium was not pleasant, but we negotiated an agreement with a
bank that offered our students loans on similar terms as they would get in public colleges.

21
The tension abated, and I still have many fond memories of the first students at
Datahøgskolen.

1983 minutes
• February 13. Rolf Falk Larsen won the World Championship in ice skating at Bislett
Stadium in Oslo.
• April 15. Ann-Kristin Olsen became Norway's first female police chief.
• July 22. A new freezing "world record" of 89.2 centigrades below zero was measured at a
weather station in Antarctica.
• August 7. Grete Waitz won the marathon and became Norway's first athletic world
champion in Helsinki.
• September 9. Norway's first AIDS mortality.
• September 20. The Norwegian pop duo the Monroes released its debut album "Sunday
People".
• November 6. Scandinavia's first heart transplant was conducted in Oslo.
• December 10. Lech Walesa received the Nobel Peace Prize.

22
1984 - Changing perspectives
Mother Else Paulsen
Our dear mother, Else Rigmor Paulsen
(born Bådstøe), died in February of
cancer at the age of fifty-two. She was a
mild tempered and careful mother and
wife. She met father when they both
worked at the Osram office at
Drammensveien 35 in Oslo. They
married in 1956 and moved to an
apartment in Eiksveien 51 in Bærum.
When I was close to two years old, they
moved to a three-room apartment in
Flyveien 15 in Luftforsvarets byggelag. I
Private photos of Else Rigmor Paulsen and her two sons at the still remember when she came up the
Holmenkollen Ski Arena stairs in 1961 with my newborn baby
brother Frode.

I was not much older the first time she took us to her uncle, where I saw his impressive ski
trophies. I was not that excited by the six much smaller brownish medals. At the time, I was
not old enough to realize that Johan Grøttumsbråten was the world’s most winning Winter
Olympian with six Olympic medals, three of them in gold.

Mother was a homemaker who took care of her two sons through Snippen day care, Huseby
primary school, and Peersbråten secondary school until we left home to study at NTH in
Trondheim. She was artistic, played violin with Bjølsen pikeorkester and
Kringkastingsorkesteret, listened to Roger Whittaker on her cassette player, and decorated
our mountain cabin near Gålå with traditional Norwegian rosemaling.

Private photo. Mom played first violin for Bjølsen school’s girl orchestra at the University of Oslo

23
Her world was different from ours. It was without computers. She was abroad only once - to
attend her sister Lill's wedding with Uncle Arne in Copenhagen. Altogether, her radio and
TV-channel options were four.

In several ways, Mom preserved raspberries,

red currants, blackberries, and gooseberries
in the summer. Cherries, apples, pears, and
plums in the fall. It was incredible how
much fruit, berries, and flowers we got from
the tiny garden colony lot at Sogn
Hagekoloni. It was established around 1920
by fire chief Ole Paulsen at Hegdehaugen
Fire Station. He was Dad’s father and the
garden colony provided welcome food
resources when Norway was occupied
during the Second World War.
Private photo. Dad, Aunt Marit, and Grandma Hilda Sofie at
Sogn Hagekoloni ca. 1925.
Much of the berries we picked were frozen
for the winter. At that time, few people had
private freezers, so we rented access to a cold storage in the basement of an apartment
building at Majorstua. I still remember how scary it was to go down there to fetch frozen
berries, pork, or reindeer meat from the dressed carcasses the adults sometimes bought from
farmers and prepared in our kitchen.

Many of my fond memories of mother are associated with weekend visits to her parents'
apartment near Sagene Church (where I was baptised) and the summer house in Ekornveien
at Nesodden.

The HÅG chair

Mother’s cousin Mary was married to Håkon Granlund who became a good friend of my
father. After mother died, he took my father on a European road trip, which obviously was a
welcome distraction and experience.

Håkon was an energetic and innovative entrepreneur who started HÅG, an office chair
company named after his initials. I remember visiting his impressive Røros Mansion and
private fishing dam at Rørosvidda. HÅG soon became a cornerstone factory at the UNESCO
World Heritage mining town of Røros. The town became the shooting venue of movie
pictures with strong women. Pippi Longstockings, An-Magritt featuring Liv Ullmann, and
Ibsen's Dollhouse with Jane Fonda as Nora. Håkon proudly told that Jane rented his Røros
mansion as her residence during the filming in 1973.

I also recall enjoyable days with Håkon, Mary, and their children, Erik and Nina, at their
summer house at Lake Tyrifjorden. Swimming and catching crayfish in the lake. Close to
Utøya. The modest island that later was all around the world. Håkon had built a private
fishing dam at Rørosvidda were he farmed trout and built a log cabin. In 1970, we dismantled
and transported it on a huge truck to Gålå where it was rebuilt as our mountain cabin.

24
Erling S. Andersen
In April, NKI was fortunate to engage Erling S. Andersen as Rector for
Datahøgskolen. His challenge was to develop Datahøgskolen into a
credible and respected institution. He immediately started to recruit
full-time and competent academic staff members. Dag-Arne Hoberg
was the first. Later came my good colleagues, Johan Havnen, Andreas
Quale, Vidar Keul, Tom Sørensen, and Knut W. Hansson. The efforts
soon paid off and in July we got the news that our students could apply
for student loans.

My old drawing of Erling

Facsimile of article about student loans in Aftenposten July 3, 1984

In July, Erling took Dag-Arne and me to New York, where we dined with Phil Dorn. A
regular contributor to the Nordic computer journal Data. Then, to the National Computer
Conference in Las Vegas and Hewlett Packard's Palo Alto headquarter in Silicon Valley. I
started to realize that Erling was an excellent and inspirational boss.

Erling was an active member of the Norwegian Computer Society (Den norske dataforening -
DND) and editor for its Nordic magazine Data. As chair of the organization from 1985 to
1987, he had regular opinion articles about ICT in Norway's leading newspaper Aftenposten.
He encouraged me to join DND, and I learned much from taking part in the Scandinavian
NordData conferences and DND's working group on data communication. I also enjoyed a
vantage point, since the long-serving Secretary General Kåre Gunnari was the father of my
best friend. One of the early DND chairs, Haakon Branæs, was a close friend of my father.

25
School mergers
NKI Datahøgskolen is not well known as a brand name anymore, but the impact of our
pioneer work can be understood through the institution's mergers and name changes:

• 1983 - NKI Datahøgskolen

• 1993 - NHI Datahøgskolen after merging with Norges Høyskole for
Informasjonsteknologi NHI when NKI acquired NæringsAkademiet
• 1995 - Den Polytekniske Høgskolen after merging with NKI Ingeniørhøgskolen
• 2002 - NITH Norges Informasjonsteknologiske Høgskole as a result of more strategic
focus on ICT
• 2014 - Westerdals – Oslo School of Art, Communication and Technology after a
merger with Westerdals. Both schools were owned by Anthon B. Nilsen Education
(ABNU).
• 2017 - Campus Kristiania after it was acquired by Campus Kristiania

1984 minutes
• January 20. The Norwegian diplomat Arne Treholt was arrested and charged for
espionage in favour of the Soviet Union. He was later sentenced to 20 years in prison.
• February 8. The Winter Olympics in Sarajevo started.
• July 28. The Summer Olympics in Los Angeles started. American sprinter Carl Lewis
became the Olympics greatest athlete with four gold medals.
• September 1. NRK P2 started broadcasting as the second national Norwegian radio
channel.
• October 31. India's Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was killed by her security guards.

26
1985 - Discovering modems and bulletin
board systems
Return to Rio
In February, Arthur and I celebrated the carnival in Rio for the second time. He still teases
me for not reaching the top of the Sugar Loaf. But I preferred to come with the Copacabana
girl who offered to teach me samba at a local carnival party. I did not speak much
Portuguese. Speechless by her stunning appearance when I picked her up at her
grandmother's modest apartment. My gorgeous Brazilian date was dressed in a minimal
carnival costume and sparkled all over her body with golden glitter. We danced all night. I
forgot how little samba and Portuguese I knew.

Unfortunately, I was food poisoned the day before we returned home. It was still allowed to
smoke in the back of trans-Atlantic flights. Resulting in a long, miserable, international flight
with abdominal pains next to the smoking area.

Academic encouragement
Erling S. Andersen encouraged me to pursue an academic career. Publish articles, give
presentations, enrol in relevant courses, and join the Norwegian Computer Society. At
Datahøgskolen, he wanted me to teach introduction to computer science, project
management, data communications, and operating systems. Therefore, he sent me to a week-
long data communication course in Stockholm in March, a data communication seminar in
Kristiansand in June, and a Unix fair in Stockholm in October.

In addition, I taught introductory courses in computer science at the Norwegian School of

Management (BI).

Computer magazines
The proliferation of computers paved the way for several computer magazines in Norway. I
read them all. Contributed frequently with articles, interviews, and suggestions. Datatid was
introduced as a magazine for ICT professionals in 1978. PC World Norge was established in
1984. Dataforeningen distributed the newsletter DND-nytt to its members. For twenty years, I
read Computerworld Norway every Friday.

It was a kick to see my first article "Tall blir bilder" in PC World Norge. An encouragement
to reach out and make a difference.

27
Datakilden AS
I have always had an entrepreneurial bone. So, in November, I
established the limited company Datakilden AS. At that time,
Norwegian entrepreneurs had to invest NOK 100,000 into
shares in a new limited company. Almost the cost of a new car.
In 2020, it was easier. Only NOK 30,000, the price of an
electric bike, was required.
Photo of Datakilden’s logo
The company income came primarily from the writing and
teaching activities I did on top of my full-time work. In hindsight, Datakilden gave welcome
additional income, sometimes too much work, but useful business experiences. In 2006, I
dissolved the company because I gradually focused more on international activities.

The pager
My father's health started to worry us, so I bought a pager (personsøker) he could ping when
he wanted me to call. It was a mobile pocket device which sole function was to receive the
telephone number of the person who wanted you to call back. Introduced as a public service
in 1984 and terminated in 2003. Made obsolete by omnipresent mobile phones.

Marathon records
The Norwegian female athlete Ingrid Kristiansen broke the
world records for 10,000 meters (30.59.42) and marathon
(2.21.06). And I improved my personal marathon record.
However, Ingrid could run the Oslo marathon, go to a
movie theatre, and still welcome me at the finish line.

Nearly forty years later, I was proud to see Stian and

Marciano finish the Oslo half marathon. Followed them on
the marathon’s app, which provided features such as live
trackers, time per km, rankings, and their pictures that
easily could be shared in social media. Interesting and
motivating technology we only could dream of when I ran
the Oslo marathon in the 1980s.

Private photo from Oslo Marathon

Oddvar Bentsen
Our students at Datahøgskolen thrived and became attractive for the job market, much
because of CIO Oddvar Bentsen. He knew all students by name and always had quick,
friendly, and personal comments to them. Something I later found important in online
teaching.

28
Facsimile of interview with Oddvar Bentsen in Aftenposten May 8, 1985.

Oddvar was the practitioner who implemented Erling S. Andersen's strategies, ideas, and
wishes. Together, they were dynamite. He worked long hours and presented himself as the
janitor when he answered the school phone in the evenings.

Oddvar continuously tried to quit smoking. One of his defunct attempts was to put his
cigarettes in a cover envelope addressed to himself in the morning. Then he spent the whole
day waiting for the company truck to return with the mail in the afternoon. Good for him that
e-mail and e-cigarettes were not yet available.

Oddvar was missed by all students and colleagues at Datahøgskolen when he died at the age
of 55 in July 2004.

PC-LAN and software

Datahøgskolen engaged Scanvest Ring Nettverkssystemer to install its first Local Area
Network (LAN) for PCs. Among the first software applications on the LAN were
WordPerfect, Lotus123, Turbo Pascal, Dbase II, GrafDoc, and the accounting software Saga
Regnskap.

I still recall how Helge Kjeilen and Øystein Moan crawled under our desks to install the
network servers, cables, and PC cards to get the network up and running. In 1986 they
founded Cinet and in 1997 Øystein became the CEO of Visma which has become a large
international ICT company.

Our NKI colleagues in Norsk DataInstitutt opened a store downtown Oslo to sell PC
equipment and software. It was no commercial success, but it gave us access to all the new
PC-software that entered the market. I was really thrilled by the ground-breaking

29
opportunities provided by a deluge of new software. I read user manuals as others read
novels. Even wrote a compendium about software for microcomputers.

No doubt that this was a technological revolution, the beginning of a new era.

Moving up the road

We moved up the road on September 9. Purchased a house with four bedrooms. A garden
with cherries, apples, pears, and plums. The same house where we first met in 1983. We
carried our modest belongings from the one-bedroom apartment we rented across the road in
Limsteinveien.

Following the Parliament election on radio the same evening, we realized that Kåre Willoch
would continue as Prime Minister in Norway. His ambitions to dissolve governmental
monopolies and regulations would continue. During his government, Norway had already
become a much more open and rich country fuelled by the increasing oil economy. Our
national esteem was improving. We were proud when Norway, for the first time, won the
European Song Contest with Bobbysocks’ Let it Swing. Amazed when A-ha reached the top
Billboard Hot 100 in the US. Optimistic when Lillehammer applied to host the 1994 Winter
Olympics.

Online bulletin boards and modems

As microcomputers and modems became more available, a few enthusiasts started to set up
Bulletin Board Systems at their private computers, enabling people to dial in with modems,
download software, and take part in online discussion forums. Among the most renowned
pioneers in Norway were Bergen By Byte and Odd de Presno's Saltrød Horror Show. It was
also interesting to follow FidoNet which emerged as an international network of PCs running
BBS server software.

I was intrigued by the BBS systems' potential and bought myself a 300 bit per second modem
for Christmas. This was a turning point in my career because I understood that computers and
data communication were the future of distance education. Realized that I could make a
difference since I worked at a computer college in a private school with extensive
competence in distance education.

1985 minutes
• January 10 and February 6. The Norwegian authors Andre Bjerke and Inger Hagerup
died, leaving behind a treasure chest of poetry cherished by Norwegian children and
adults.
• April 21. Ingrid Kristiansen took the world record in the London Marathon with 2.21.06.
• May 4. Norwegian pop duo Bobbysocks won the Eurovision Song Contest in Gothenburg
with «La det swinge».
• May 29. Thirty-eight people died at Heysel Stadium in Brussels during riots prior to the
final of the series winner's cup between Liverpool and Juventus. Another tragedy hit
football when a fire on Bradford City's home field and fifty-three people lost their lives.
• October. A-ha topped the charts in many countries with Take on me.

30
Three 1985 publications in Norwegian

1. Paulsen, M. F. 1985. Programvare for Mikromaskiner. Oslo: Datahøgskolen. sider: 40.

2. Paulsen, M. F. 1985. Edb-opplæring i Norge. Norsk Programvare Index 1985(2):37-38.
3. Paulsen, M. F. 1985. Tall blir bilder. PC World Norge, 1985(1):35-37.

31
1986 - Designing the first LMS for distance
education
At the Soviet border
In March we celebrated my best friend Atle's wedding with Ragnhild in Kirkenes. Used the
opportunity to visit the 198 km border between Norway and the Soviet Union at Grense
Jakobselv. This was during the Cold War, and many Norwegians had served in the military to
protect the area from the Soviets. Mikhail Gorbatsjov had recently become general secretary
of the Communist Party, but many Norwegians felt threatened by the communists and their
nuclear arsenal.

Just weeks later, on April 26, we experienced the biggest nuclear accident ever when a
reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant failed. The Soviet authorities did not report the
accident, and Norwegian researchers measured unexplained increases in radioactivity.
Norwegian mushrooms, berries, moss, sheep, reindeer, and other game contained unsafe
amounts of radioactivity after the accident.

Norddata in Stockholm
The first NordData conference for Nordic ICT
professionals was organized in Helsinki in 1968. Every
year, the conference was passed on to the next Nordic
country in line. In June, I attended my first NordData
conference in Stockholm with NKI's ICT manager,
Ragnar Andersen. My presentation was titled PC-
communication - The gateway to a new world. It was an
enthusiastic account of my explorations of various
bulletin board systems using my PC, modem, and
communication software.

At the conference, I met Norwegian pundits who I still

admire: Arild Haraldsen, Peter Hidas, and Helge Seip. I
also met Jacob Palme. The man behind PortaCom
developed at the Stockholm University Computing
Center. A system for computer mediated communication
Facsimile from my NordData 86 paper
(CMC) which Kjell Åge Bringsrud and Dag Belsnes
tested at the University of Oslo.

Gro Harlem Brundtland had just started her second period as Norwegian Prime Minister, and
the Swedes were still in shock after the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme on February 28.
Christer Petersson was later arrested and convicted of the murder but acquitted after being in
prison for about 5 months. Palme's killer is still unknown.

Sweden. Norway’s closest neighbour. Twice our population. The richer and bigger brother
we left in 1905. The arrogant best friend we always wanted to trounce. A small country with

32
international ambitions and influential leaders. Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-
General of the UN. Alfred Nobel, and Olof Palme.

Growing up, I spent much time in the back of my father’s Volvos and SAABs. Read Astrid
Lindgren. Saw Bjørn Borg play tennis and Ingemark Stenmark excel in slalom. Listened to
ABBA and watched Swedish television. Heavily influenced by Swedish culture.

Looking back, Norway's fascination and inferiority with Sweden gradually decreased.
Globalization opened our eyes to a variety of cultures. Oil richness and growing successes in
international affairs, music, literature, and sports improved our national self-esteem. So, it is
fair to say that Norwegians now perceive Swedes more as friends and partners than big
brothers.

The EKKO learning management system

Drawing of metaphor for NKI’s electronic college and the EKKO main menu

Inspired by my experiences with PortaCom and the PC-based Bulletin Board Systems, I
suggested in February that NKI should start to offer online education. In April, NKI's board
provided funding for the project.

So, I came up with specifications for an electronic

college designed for distance education. Termed it
EKKO. Meaning echo in Norwegian - an awkward
acronym for EleKtronisk KOmbinertundervisning.
The figure shows the metaphor I drew to explain the
online college concept.

The first version of EKKO was developed in the

Screenshot of my 1989 video explanation of
EKKO. Still available at www.nooa.no/wp-
content/uploads/2020/03/EKKO.mp4
spring of 1986 by Bjørn Mobæk and Lars Hornfeldt,
who were students at the NKI College of Engineering.
They developed EKKO in the programming language
Pascal on an HP-3000 computer, as part of their final
project in the summer of 1986.

33
It was first used in addition to ordinary face-to-face teaching by students at Datahøgskolen
(the NKI Computer College) in the fall of 1986. I remember I posted the notes from my
lectures and the assignments on EKKO's bulletin boards. Invited the students to discuss the
assignments in EKKO's discussion forums. Asked them to deliver their assignment work via
EKKO's e-mail.

To my delight, it worked. And the students were positive about the experiment.

During the developing process, we discovered two more intriguing projects. The EIES project
led by Murray Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hilz at New Jersey Institute of Technology and the
CoSy project at the University of Guelph in Canada.

The online education resistance

Change is difficult. Advocating innovation could be hard. As a pioneer, I have fought
relentlessly for decades to convince educators about the benefits of online education. Pushed
boundaries and not always asked for permission. Luckily, challenging fights can result in
sweet victories. Monica Johannesen likes to remind me how our ICT educated colleagues
first reacted when I suggested that we could communicate by e-mail in EKKO.

EMAIL??? No way, our offices are too close!

It took a few years to get acceptance from ICT people. Decades to convince correspondence
teachers and classroom teachers that online education could be a better alternative. At the
cursor moment, I realize that resistance increased with the growing success of online
education. Because it threatened the status quo.

Summer in Florida and IBM's Boca Raton factory

Summer vacation in Florida. Disney World. Fourth of July in Fort Lauderdale. Drove down
to Key West. Cruised from Miami to Bahamas with Scandinavian Sun. A party boat with
young Americans having Bloody Mary drinks for breakfast. Swimming pool competitions.
How many ping-pong balls could the girls keep in their bikinis? Scarily similar to its sister
ship Scandinavian Star. The ship that was set on fire in 1990 on its way from Oslo to
Frederikshavn in Denmark. 159 people died in the Scandinavian tragedy.

I was eager to visit the IBM factory that produced the new IBM PC AT. It was, however,
harder than expected because of the many IBM PC clones that had appeared. IBM would not
share their secrets with foreigners. I was still granted access after several telephone calls and
arguments that I would write an article for PC World Norway.

I appreciated the opportunity to visit the factory but must admit that it was less high-tech than
expected. Just a few people assembling standard components. I realized why there were so
many successful IBM clones. Strange enough, I still remember how the workers were wired
with cords to not damage the computer circuits with electric sparks.

34
Tele-tension in Budapest
From October 17th to 27th, I attended TeleTeaching 86 in Budapest with my colleague
Andreas Quale. This was my first visit to an Eastern European country, and the situation felt
tense when people gathered in the streets 30 years after the Soviet occupation started on
October 23, 1956.

The conference was organized by the John von Neumann Society for Computing Sciences
and sponsored by IFIP TC3. The conference theme was Remote Education and Informatics,
and I remember meeting Fred Mulder from the Open University of the Netherlands and
Sylvia Charp - editor of T.H.E. Journal (Technological Horizons in Education). She
encouraged me to submit an article to her journal, and I was thrilled to see In Search of a
Virtual School published in the Dec/Jan 87/88 issue. My first article in an American journal
where I predicted that virtual schools would dominate future distance education. And listed a
dozen computer conferencing systems with examples on how they were used in teaching.

The conference hosts organized a sightseeing tour to Lake Balaton. Halfway there, the bus
driver realized that we would arrive after dark and not see anything of interest. So, he took a
highway U-turn and stopped at a local tavern. Good local food was improvised, along with
plenty to drink. Most of the participants were challenged to sing drinking songs from their
home countries. I guess we all have fond memories of Lake Balaton.

The correspondence student

NKI was one of Scandinavia’s largest correspondence schools, and I wanted to build on these
experiences in my online teaching. I therefore enrolled in the correspondence course:
"Essentials in Distance Education". A course offered by the European Home Study Council
(EHSC). An organization established in 1968. Merged with the European Council for
Education by Correspondence (CEC) in 1985 into the Association of European
Correspondence Schools (AECS). And change its name to the European Association for
Distance Learning (EADL) in 1999.

My teacher was the internationally renowned expert and former ICDE President Börje
Holmberg.

He was Professor of Distance Education Methodology and Director of the Institute for
Distance Education Research at the German FernUniversität in Hagen. Famous for his
Theory and Practice of Distance Education.

So, my excitement was immense when I, after a couple of weeks, received the snail mail
envelope with his feedback to my assignments. But my disappointment was immense when I
realized that I could not read his handwriting.

It was my first and only correspondence course. Which taught me that correspondence
students deserved swifter communication via keyboards. That we lacked access to other
students. And that distance education was ready for a paradigm shift.

But the content about course development and distance teaching was useful in my online
education endeavours.

35
Cover page and table of contents from “Essentials in distance education”

1986 minutes
• January 28. The Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after launch, killing
the crew of seven astronauts.
• February 28. Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot and killed. Christer Petersson
was arrested and convicted of the murder but acquitted after being in prison for about 5
months. Palme's killer is still unknown.
• April 26. A mishandled safety test at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant killed at least
4,000. 350,000 had to move from the area. Radioactive fallout reached Norway and traces
of its radioactive deposits reached nearly every country in the northern hemisphere.

Two 1986 publications in Norwegian

1. Paulsen, M. F. 1986. Introduksjonshefte til Datahøgskolens Mikromaskiner. Oslo:

Datahøgskolen. Sider: 24.
2. Paulsen, M. F. 1986. Hos IBM i Boca Raton. PC mikrodata, 1986(10):42-44.

36
1987 - Teaching Norway's first distance
students online
From correspondence to distance education
In January, EADTU was established. The European Association of Distance Teaching
Universities. Eleven founding members had an ambition to become a platform for
collaboration with the European Commission. The five European Open Universities and
several national organisations. Among them were the Norwegian Association of Distance
Education (NADE, later Fleksibel utdanning Norge). The founding meeting was organized by
the Open University of the Netherlands in Heerlen. Erling Ljoså attended as chair of NADE.
He elaborates on this in Norwegian in his personal account about international engagements
and cooperation.

At the same time, I became aware of two more institutions that later became important to me.
The International Council for Correspondence Education (ICCE) was established in 1938 and
changed name to ICDE in 1982. The Association of European Correspondence Schools
(AECS) was established in 1985 and changed name in 1999 to EADL - the European
Association for Distance Learning.

NordData 87 in Trondheim
In June 1987, I attended the NordData conference at the
University of Technology in Trondheim. My alma mater.
The University of professor Asbjørn Rolstadås. The town of
educational innovators like Jan Wibe, Arvid Staupe, Per
Borgersen, and Thorleif Hjeltnes. People who were
instrumental in establishing TISIP in December 1985. Later
pivotal in the development of the controversial Learning
Management System Winix (1985-1990) and the innovative
NITOL network (1994-2008).

The title of my presentation could be translated to "A Virtual

School - Dream Castle or Real Construct?" It included an
international overview of computer conferencing systems
and some references to educational use of the systems. In
addition, it presented our educational experiences with the
EKKO system.
Facsimile from my NordData 87 paper
The conclusion could be translated to: Some institutions
work to develop virtual schools based on computer mediated communication systems. There
is still a need for improved quality of content, pedagogy, administration, and social services.
But the work has started. My conclusion is, therefore, that virtual schools are no longer dream
castles, they are becoming real constructs.

37
Stian
Stian was born in April. When the water broke, we immediately saw that it was miscoloured.
Marith was rushed away to the operating theatre. I was commanded to wait outside.
Extremely nervous. Don't ask how long I waited, but the relief was enormous when
everything was fine with mother and son.

CD-players had been available in Norway since 1983. We bought the first one to entertain
Stian. Torbjørn Egner was among our favourites. The Norwegian playwright, songwriter, and
illustrator known for his narratives for children. But "Stius" also got his dose of A-ha, David
Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Stones, and Beatles.

I'm far from a talented singer, but all parents should sing, read, and play music for their kids.
We did it a lot and enjoyed it tremendously. The kid easily learned more melodies and lyrics
than I could imagine - a gift we both appreciate.

Mom used her marathon skills pushing his stroller for hours. As she did with the kids in the
Banehaugen neighbourhood thirty years earlier. Dad pulled him in a ski sledge. As a real
Norwegian, Stian should learn to enjoy the outdoor life.

A new generation. So many opportunities. His first six-month itinerary topped the travel log
of my first six years. One month old, he joined us for the two-day data communication
seminar at the idyllic seafront Hotel Havna. Took part in the evening boat trip around the
beautiful Tjøme archipelago. Six months old, he flew with us to Düsseldorf, where we rented
a car to see the Rhine valley. Köhln, Königswinter, and Baden Baden. Including a visit to
Deutsche FernUniversität in Hagen.

One early memory stuck: A sunny summer morning. Father and son playing under the cherry
tree in front of our red house. Sun shining, son smiling. The happiest moment so far in my
life.

Another unforgettable 1987 memory. My newborn son, in my father's wheelchair lap. Joy
and sadness. Preparing to become Pater Familias.

On top of the World Trade Center

In August Torstein Rekkedal, Bjørn Mobæk, and I made a study tour to exchange experiences
with the pioneers of online education in the US and Canada. We started with a Sunday in
New York. Jogging in Central Park in the morning and visiting the Guggenheim Museum at
lunchtime. Then suppressing my fear of heights from the roof of the World Trade Center.

Just a couple of months earlier, West German teenager Mathias Rust landed on a bridge next
to the Red Square in Moscow with a Cessna aircraft. We were surprised that a foreigner so
easily could navigate an aircraft into the heart of a superpower.

38
Visiting the online education pioneers
Star struck to meet Starr Roxanne Hiltz and
Murray Turoff in their office at the New
Jersey Institute of Technology. Husband and
wife who were known for their ground-
breaking work with Computer Mediated
Communication (CMC) and the EIES
computer conferencing system. Got hold of
the 1982 book Starr Roxanne Hiltz wrote
with Elaine B. Kerr: Computer-mediated
Communication Systems - Status and
Evaluation.

Private photo outside NJIT in 1987 We met Peter Haratonic at the Manhattan
office of the New School for Social
Research. He told us about their experiences with the EIES system. About their collaboration
with Paul Levinson and his company, Connect Ed.

Angela Richards and Cristine Languth welcomed us at a Long Island institution with the
overambitious name American Open University. A “virtual campus” started by the New York
Institute of Technology (NYIT) in 1984 and based on the Participate conferencing system.

Considered visiting Andrew Feenberg at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute. They
offered the first online college program through its School of Management and Strategic
Studies in 1981. But decided to stay on the east coast. So, we rented a car and visited Michael
G. Moore at Pennsylvania State University. A choice that later proved important to me.

We stopped to see Niagara Falls. Drove up to Canada and visited Robert J. McQueen, who
worked with the CoSy conferencing system at the University of Guelph. The system that the
Open University in the UK later chose. Got the documentation from the First Guelph
Symposium on Computer Mediated Communication.

We also visited Linda Harasim at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE) and
learned about her pioneer work. Her work with collaborative learning and with online
discourse analysis. Her 1986 book: Educational Applications of Computer Networks.

39
Teaching distance students online
I continued to use EKKO as an online
teaching supplement in all the on-campus
courses I taught in 1987. Our interns, Ragnar
Børsum and Bjørn Myrvold, were
enthusiastic supporters. In the spring we
installed a modem pool to handle dial-in
connections to EKKO. Suddenly I could use
EKKO to communicate from home with my
students in their dorms. We were ready for
online distance education.

So, in the fall we contacted some of the

students who enrolled in NKI's
correspondence course Introduction to
computer science. Inger Bergland and three
others accepted to become our first online
students with me as their online teacher.

The first challenge was to help them set up

their modems and connect to EKKO. We
succeeded together and proved that it was
possible to use EKKO for distance education.
One student completed all six study units and
did well on the final voluntary exam. One
completed all study units but did not enrol for
the exam. One completed five of the six study
units. One completed only the first study unit.

I concluded that technical support was crucial

for online education and that we needed more
students to create a social environment
online.

Facsimile of interview with Inger Bergland in the second 1988

issue of Verk og Virke

The devastating disease

Henry Louis Gehrig was a renowned American baseball player who, on his 36th birthday,
received a diagnosis that many still know as Gehrig's disease. More known as Amyotrophic
Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). A devastating disease that causes the death of neurons controlling
muscles. Gradually reducing muscular strength and control. Arms, legs, hands, fingers, and

40
tongue. The lungs can be attached to a ventilator. The heart continues to beat. Brain, ears, and
eyes are less affected. Advanced technology makes it possible to communicate through eye
movements.

The Swedish TV-journalist Ulla-Carin Lindquist wrote the touching little book "Ro uten
årer". A book about life and death written after she was diagnosed on her 50th anniversary.
The Norwegian novelist Axel Jensen struggled with ALS for ten years before he died in
2003. In November, our dear father Jon Flate Paulsen died from ALS at the age of 67.

Father Jon Flate Paulsen

Dad's father grew up at the tenant's farm, Flaten,
near Børsa in Sør-Trøndelag. That's the origin of
the middle name I have passed on to my
children. Flate. A name I was not comfortable
with as a kid since some people used “Fy Flate”
as an acceptable substitute for a harsher curse. A
name I first embraced when I started to pursue
an academic career.

Dad's mother's family was from Harpefoss in the

Gudbrandsdalen valley. A tiny place with a
charming name. Harp Falls. Describing the
sound of River Lågen when it passed through
the narrow river canyon. The Iversen family
guarded the railroad gates and tracks when the
railroad was extended from Eidsvoll to Otta in
1896. According to my father, one relative was
killed when he tried to save his handcar from a
passing train.

Dad had fond childhood memories from

Harpefoss and the mountains in the area. We
often visited his cousins and mother's twin sister
there. In 1970 we celebrated his 50th
anniversary at the local guest house Grøntuva
where he happily signed the property contract
for the mountain plot "Måsåplassen". The home
of our log cabin at Gålå.

Dad was intelligent, but not handy. When the

Facsimile of anniversary announcement for Jon F.
Paulsen, Arbeiderbladet September 28, 1979
motor of his first car, a white SAAB 96, died in
the Majorstukrysset crossroad, Mom carefully
asked: Why don't you open the hood and look at
the engine? He typically retorted: Do you think
it helps?

41
Dad finished the obligatory seven years of education at Majorstua Folkeskole, continued with
four years of Middelskole at Vestheim and one year office training at the Oslo Kommunale
Handelsskole. Then, the Second World War started.

He worked most of his life for the Osram light bulb factory. That's probably why he
introduced me to the exciting book about Thomas Alva Edison and his inventions. It probably
inspired me to be innovative, study engineering, and read many biographies about famous
people in the series titled "Elite serien".

I remember Dad as a wise, humorous, and upright man who smoked South State cigarettes
and taught us to be diligent and behave well. He was early grey. I can only recall him as
white-haired. In hindsight, I understand that he looked for and supported activities that could
improve his oldest son's low self-esteem. He probably saw a little, shy boy who ran fast when
scared. So, Dad wisely steered me into athletics.

Bislett Stadium
For many years, Dad took me to Bislett Stadium to watch the yearly international athletics
competition. I still recall Terje Pedersen's javelin flying through the 1964 evening air - - -
reaching the incredible 91.72 meters new world record. Ron Clarke's shattering 10,000-meter
record (27.39.4) in 1965. We witnessed many of the two dozen world records at Bislett
Stadium. Lots of good memories with Norwegian role models and world stars like Sebastian
Coe, Steve Ovett, Steve Cram, Henry Rono, Ingrid Kristiansen, and Grete Waitz. All
announced by the omnipresent speaker, Jan Hemsvik. With the same steady voice that
numerous times pronounced my name over the loudspeaker when I took part in local
competitions for kids at Frogner, Jordal, and Bislett Stadium.

Dad encouraged me to train in athletics. For many years we were permanent fixtures at the
athletics season's closing week competitions at Bislett. Dad as driver and bystander, Hemsvik
as speaker, and myself trying all the athletic activities.

My talent was primarily in the 60- and 100-meter sprint. I trained with several talented
sprinters in the athletics club Ready. Tom Bysveen, Henrik Gjertsen, Sverre Tysland, and
Leif Næss. And Knut Marius Stokke who were four-time Norwegian champion in 100- and
200-meter sprint. It was not easy to receive the baton from him when I ran the last leg of the
4x100 meter relay.

1987 minutes
• February 2. The Scottish novelist Alistair MacLean passed away. His works include The
Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. Both became popular movies.
• August 30. Norway’s first Sunday newspaper issue was published by Morgenbladet.
• September. Norway got a new monetary expression, 1 mong, (equivalent to NOK 3.8
billion), after Statoil's excess costs at the Mongstad oil refinery became known.
• October 19. The New York Stock Exchange dropped 23% on Black Monday. The Oslo
Stock Exchange crashed the day after. But the crash did not lead to the usual economic
downturn and already a year later the stock exchanges were at the same level as before
the crash.

42
• September 19. Einar Gerhardsen died. From 1945 to 1965, he was the Labour Party’s
Prime Minister for three periods. With 17 years in office, he was Norway’s longest
serving Prime Minister since the introduction of parliamentarism. He was often referred
to as the Father of the Nation (Landsfaderen) and is generally considered as one of the
main architects of the rebuilding of Norway after World War II.

Seven 1987 publications in English and Norwegian

1. Paulsen, M. F. 1987/1988. In search of a virtual school. T.H.E. Journal, (Dec./Jan.):71-

76.
2. Paulsen, M. F. 1987. Datahøgskolens konferansesystem. PC World Norge, 1987(4):32-
34.
3. Paulsen, M. F. 1987. Virtuelle skoler. PC World Norge, 1987(6):30-32.
4. Paulsen, M. F. 1987. KILDEN - et konferansesystem for DND? DND-Nytt, 3(5):16-17.
5. Paulsen, M. F. 1987. KILDEN: Et scenario om konferansesystemer. DATA 1987(3):62-
63.
6. Paulsen, M. F. 1987. På leting etter en virtuell skole. DATA-Norge 3(5):38-48.
7. Mobæk, B. og Paulsen, M. F. Konferansesystemer - En rapport om konferansesystemer
for flerbruker datamaskiner. Intern NKI-rapport. 25 sider.

43
1988 - Attending ICDE's World Conference
in Oslo
Studying and teaching at Connect Ed
In the winter of 87/88, I enrolled in the online three-credit course Computer Conferencing in
Business and Education. One of several courses offered through the EIES conferencing
system by Connect Ed. Paul Levinson, the company manager, was the teacher. His partner,
Tina Vozick, handled all course administration. The course had eight study units, each
scheduled for a week. Paul introduced each study unit. He explained which part of the
curriculum the study unit focused on and introduced some topics for discussion. He
motivated the students and moderated the discussions. Students who took an active part in the
discussions and submitted a final course report received a course certificate.

Søren Nipper from Denmark was one of

15 students in my class. One interesting
EIES feature was that we could list the
names of the students that were online. I
remember feeling part of an important
new movement the Saturday night we
were only three students online:
Muhammad, Jesus, and myself.

In the summer semester, Connect Ed

offered four online courses. Paul
Levinson taught Issues in International
Telecommunication. Partly from his
home office in New York city and partly
from his "electronic cottage" at Cape Cod
- with three guest experts: Jerry Glenn,
Terrence Wright, and me. So, my first
international online teaching experience
was about telecommunication events and
trends in the Scandinavian countries.

More of my experiences from the course

are available in this Facebook post.

Screenshot of Facebook post about Connect Ed experiences.

44
Free online education
To gain experience with more students, we decided to offer three online courses for free in
the spring. Introduction to computer science, Pascal programming, and System analysis.
Together, these courses were equivalent to the first semester of the part-time study program
we offered to on-campus students at Datahøgskolen. Altogether, 57 course enrolments and 35
course completions in the spring.

The article in the picture is from NKI-Perspektiv nr. 2, 1988. It shows some of the first online
students and their three pioneer teachers: Rolf Ingebrigtsen, me, and Lars Eskeland.

The experiences from the spring courses were so positive that NKI offered the same three
courses with tuition fees in the fall. We also added the two courses Introduction to business
administration and Cobol programming. In addition, we continued to develop a conference
named E-KRO (Electronic Cafe) as a social meeting place for prospective students, enrolled
students, tutors, and staff.

The courses were offered with fixed start-up dates and paced progression to establish a
community feeling and support communication between students. Several of my colleagues
were sceptical. They argued that we should allow students to decide when they wanted to
start and how fast they should progress through the course. As in correspondence courses.

We had two public telephone lines for 300 bit per second modems and two for autodetection
of 1200 and 2400 bit per seconds. Six Datapak channels allowed students to access EKKO
via local nodes that provided cheaper communication.

The experiences from our online education courses are well documented in both Norwegian
and English. They became a wonderful source for research, projects, articles, paper
presentations, reports, and books. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to learn from and work
with NKI’s research and development manager, Torstein Rekkedal, in this process. His
international contacts and reputation opened a lot of doors for me.

45
Facsimile of advertisement of free online courses in Aftenposten, February 9, 1988

46
Facsimile of NKI publication presenting some of the first online students and teachers.

Datakomm 88 in Oslo
In February, DND's Special Interest Group on data communication arranged the conference
Datakomm 88 in Oslo. I was on the planning committee with Lasse Berntsen, Kjell Åge
Bringsrud, Knut Smaaland, and others. I had a presentation on distance education and data
communication. There, I met Bengt Olsen who presented a paper on computer conferencing
and PortaCom.

47
The AECS Conference in Istanbul
In April, the Association of European Correspondence Schools (AECS - later EADL)
conference was arranged in Istanbul. The most populous city in Europe. A third of the
population on the Asian side of the Bosporus. My first intriguing taste of Asia.

Torstein gave a keynote presentation titled Computer Conferencing in the NKI Distance
Education System. Together with several Norwegian delegates, I was amazed by the Grand
Bazaar, the Topkapi Palace and Harem, the Blue Mosque, and the Hagia Sophia.

My memories of belly dancing and pictures from the One Thousand and One Nights
costumes dinner are precious. Erling Ljoså, Dagny Blom, and Morten Søby were colourful
representatives from NKS. Tormod Carlsen dressed as a sheikh. Berit Johnsen and Tove
Kristiansen were princesses. Tony Kaye encouraged me to come to OUUK's conference on
computer conferencing in the fall.

NordData 88 in Helsinki
The annual NordData conference was organized in Helsinki in June. Finland, a Nordic
country drawn between east and west. Still in the shadow of the Soviet Union. Urho
Kekkonen had been president for my entire life until Mauno Koivisto took over in 1982.

We boarded the night train in Oslo and arrived in Stockholm early the next morning. Waiting
for the ferryboat to Helsinki, we walked around the old city centre, Gamla Stan, with Stian in
a stroller. The one-year-old boy whimpered more and more, so we went to the emergency
reception at Stockholms Akutten.

Mother and son flew back to Oslo with a hernia. Father continued with the ferryboat passing
the scenic archipelagos from Stockholm to Helsinki. To give a presentation titled
"Experiences with computermediated communication systems in distance education".

The presentation focused on our work with the EKKO system and concluded: We have
experienced that computermediated conferencing (CMC) systems provide new opportunities
for distance education. We have discovered challenges that need to be addressed and teaching
methods that work. Our work showed that CMC systems can offer and administrate
pedagogical and social college environments. We believe CMC systems will be central in
future distance education.

The visit reminded me of my first trip abroad. In May 1971, a couple of hundred kids from
the four Nordic capitals met in Helsinki to take part in the twenty third Competitions in
Athletics and Soccer. Joined the athletic team at the night train from Oslo to Stockholm. With
my schoolmates Anne Søby and Tom Bysveen. Along with Tom Inge Ørner, Torgeir
Skogseth, and Bjørn Gundersen. Holding my breath during take-off. As my very first flight
took us from Stockholm to Helsinki. Where I was hosted by the Öhman family in
Kantelevägen. Luckily, they belonged to the Swedish-speaking community since the
Scandinavian languages have far more in common with English than Finnish. The only
Finnish word I could say to them was kiitos - which is takk in Norwegian and thank you in
English.

48
The ICDE World Conference in Oslo
In 1988, ICDE - the International Council for Open and Distance Education celebrated its
50th anniversary. And the 14th ICDE World Conference was held at the University of Oslo,
August 9-16. 700 participants from 60 countries. Arranged by Norsk Forbund for
Fjernundervisning (NFF, later Fun) - the Norwegian Association for Distance Education
(NADE). The organization in which Erling Ljoså was president, Reidar Roll was executive
director, and Turid Widerø managed the secretariat.

I was there, giving a presentation titled Computer Conferencing in Distance Education:

Experiences with the implementation of computer conferencing in distance education. More
spectacular was our attempt to erect the world’s largest tower cake at Henie Onstad art centre.

Flipping through the old conference proceedings, I was surprised to see so many familiar
names. Scholars whose research I have studied carefully. Colleagues I have enjoyed meeting
and exchanging experiences with. Among them who have influenced my online education
world are: ICDE Presidents Börje Holberg, Sir John Daniel, and David Sewart. Greville
Rumble, Paul Bacsich, Tony Bates, Liz Burge, Fabio Chacon, Keith Harry, Michael G.
Moore, David Murphy, Som Naidu, Jason Ohler, Bruce Scriven, and Armando Villaroel.

One paper caught my attention. Angela Castro’s introduction started: In the last two years, a
small silver platter called the CD-ROM, which uses optical storage technology, has made
inroads into academic libraries, art galleries, and museums. This small disk measuring only
12.5 centimetres and made from heavily coated polycarbonate plastic, which renders it
extremely hard, is capable of holding information equivalent to the content of 1,500 floppy
disks, or 500 average sized books.

I also found the paper I wrote with Torstein Rekkedal in the proceedings. Computer
conferencing: A breakthrough in distance learning or just another technological gadget?

49
Facsimile of pictures in ICDE's Report from the Fourteenth World Conference

50
The ICDE secretariat settled in Oslo
The Oslo conference was indeed a breakthrough for ICDE. Our late King Olav was present
along with Norway’s Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who stated that the Norwegian
Government would support a permanent ICDE secretariat in Norway.

In August, the ICDE secretariat was established in Oslo with Reidar Roll as its first secretary
general. The secretariate shared offices and worked closely with the Norwegian Association
for Distance Education (NADE).

Among the employees I remember meeting in the early days of ICDE were Turi Widerøe,
who is recognized as the first female pilot in a major airline, and Trond Waage, who later
became Ombudsman for Children in Norway. A few years later, I also met Ana Perona who
made important contributions as ICDE's Assistant Secretary General.

Facsimile of ICDE flier made for the 1988 world conference in Oslo

An electronic university in a mediaeval monastery

Jostein Soland invited me to give a presentation about our online learning experiences at a
post conference seminar arranged by Electronic University Norway at the 800 years old
Utstein Monastery. We arrived by boat from Norway's oil capital, Stavanger, and slept in the
modest chambers that were used by the monks.

I wanted to make a live demonstration of the NKI Online College in the monastery library
where the seminar took place. To do so, I needed to connect my PC-modem to the

51
monastery's only telephone outlet, which was in the main office. Luckily, I found a 20-metre
electric cord which could work as a telephone cable extension and climbed outside the metre-
thick monastery stone walls to connect my modem to the telephone line. It felt like linking
the mediaeval time with the computer age. It was also a boost to hear the American guests of
honour from EUN were envious of some of our LMS features and impressed by my live
demonstration of our online courses.

Facsimile of article about the Electronic University Network in Aftenposten, August 2, 1988.

UK Open University in October

In October, I gave a presentation about my online education experiences at the conference
Computer Conferencing in Distance Education at OUUK - the Open University in Milton
Keynes. The presentation was titled EKKO - A Virtual School.

At the conference, I learned that OUUK was planning to introduce its first online course
based on CoSy in 1989.

It was my first visit to the Open University. Milton Keynes, an impressive university campus.
Without students. But plenty of course designers, support staff, esteemed academics, and
radio and television studios operated in collaboration with BBC. Founded in 1969 by the
Labour government under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. A model for many of the open
universities that later were established around the world.

Incredible that I later had the honour of attending its 50th anniversary gala dinner, invited
with prominent guests such as Sir John Daniel, Robert Wilson, and David Attenborough.

1988 minutes
• June 12. The Norwegian women's soccer team became world champion after beating
Sweden 1-0 in the final in China.
• September 15. Lillehammer was awarded the 1994 Winter Olympics.
• October 1. Gorbachev was elected Soviet president.

52
• November 8. George Bush was elected US president.

Two 1988 publications in English and Norwegian

1. Paulsen, M. F. and T. Rekkedal. 1988. Computer conferencing: A breakthrough in

distance learning or just another technological gadget? In Proceedings of The World
Conference of the International Council for Distance Education, 362-365. Oslo, Norway:
International Council for Distance Education.
2. Paulsen, M. F. 1988. Deltidsstudier i New York - via PC. PC World Norge, 1988(4):62-
64.

Three 1988 presentations in Turkey, the UK, and Norway

1. AECS, Istanbul 1988: Computer Conferencing: A breakthrough in distance learning, or

another technical gadget?
2. ICDE, Oslo 1988: Computer Conferencing in Distance Education: Experiences with the
implementation of computer conferencing in distance education.
3. CCDE, Milton Keynes 1988: EKKO - A Virtual School.

53
1989 - Gaining international attention
Online teaching innovations in EKKO
In 1989, the NKI electronic college had 150 course enrolments in six different online courses.
The growing number of courses and students made it possible for us to experiment with
various teaching approaches, as described in the following.

In the Fall 1988, Monica Johannesen taught

the Information Systems course. In a course
forum, she presented a case and assigned each
student a role. The case described a company
planning to invest in a new computer-based
office automation system. The students were
assigned roles as users, accounting officer,
project manager, labour union representative,
etc. Over a period of about fourteen days, the
students were expected to elucidate the
different facets of this project, as reflected
through their roles.

Ragnar Børsum taught the Pascal and Cobol

programming courses every semester since the
Fall of 1988. In the Pascal course, the students
programmed in Turbo Pascal on their home
PC. The program source code was posted to
the instructor or shared with the other students
in the course forum. In this way, the teacher
and the students could download the program
codes, change them if they desired, and
Facsimile. Front cover of Datahøgskolen’s course catalogue execute them on their local computers. In the
connecting Monica Johannesen, Jan Nergård, and Morten Cobol course he experimented with letting the
Flate Paulsen
students access the host computer's Cobol
compiler. This was bothersome, but it worked. The important lesson was, however, that
distant students could access host computer applications such as compilers, database systems,
statistics software, etc.

Henny Lindland used the EKKO online multiple-choice database we developed as a part of
the Introduction to Computer Science course, for the first time in the Fall 1989. The students
could download multiple-choice questions, spend some time to figure out the answers, and
then upload their suggestions and let the database score them.

54
Grandpa Moste
I thought about Grandpa Moste when I read Norman
Coomb’s 1989 article, Using CMC to Overcome
Physical Disabilities in Mindweave. About online
courses with a blind teacher and hearing-impaired
students. I realized I wanted to use ICT to make
education more available for people with all kinds of
social and physical challenges.

All children and grandchildren in the family called him

Moste. The nickname coming out of my toddler mouth
when my parents urged me to say Morfar (mother’s
father).

He gradually lost his hearing, and it became more and

more difficult to communicate with him. His hearing
aids were primitive and uncomfortable. So sad for both
of us that SMS messages, e-mail, and social media
Private photo of Grandpa Thoralf Baadstøe communication were not available in his world.

I adored him and missed him a lot when he passed away at the age of 93 in May. He made up
scary fairy tales about trolls, showed us the cave they lived in, and explained that trolls only
appeared at night because they burst in sunshine. A chubby handyman who made bows and
arrows from defunct umbrellas and feathered headgear so that we could dress up as cowboys
and indians. An artist who made furniture and fishing gear with the kids.

As a young electrician, Thoralf Baadstøe worked to connect the houses in the Sørkedalen
Valley to the electricity grid. At Grøttumsbråten, he was greeted by Petra Jensine
(Pedersdatter) Grøttumsbråten. There, the electric sparks were all around my future
grandparents.

As a pensioner, he lived six months a year at the Nesodden summer house. My summer
paradise. Where I looked up to my older cousins, Stein and Dag. Memories captured in my
detailed 1969 drawing. Moste spent hours fishing and smoking his pipe in the tiny rowing
boat that fit perfectly around his belly. When the boat capsized, he had to swim ashore with
money notes in his pockets—tugging the boat, wearing his cap, looking through his glasses
and puffing his pipe.

55
My childhood drawing of the Nesodden summer house.

Mindweave and Milton Keynes

Back in the United Kingdom. The cultural empire that influenced my generation of
Norwegian teenagers immensely. We identified with the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. Loved
James Bond and Alistair MacLean movies. Watched countless hours of British TV series on
the only TV channel available in Norway. Studied British English (and culture) as our first
foreign language. When schools were cut down from six to five days a week, we often spent
Saturday afternoons watching the Premier League as passionate supporters of Manchester
United, Liverpool, or Arsenal.

In May, I returned to Milton Keynes to attend the MTED Workshop. Gave the presentation
EKKO - Experiences and learned more about OUUK's first large-scale online course. Using
the Canadian computer conferencing system CoSy they enrolled 1400 students in the world’s
first large-scale online course Introduction to ICT and social issues.

As a follow up of the conference I attended in Milton Keynes the year before, Robin Mason
and Anthony Kaye introduced the influential book: Mindweave: Communication, Computers
and Distance Education, which was published by Pergamon Press in 1989.

I contributed with the paper EKKO: a virtual school and read all 31 contributions with great
interest.

Among the other prominent pioneers who contributed to Mindweave were Andrew Feenberg,
Paul Levinson, Linda Harasim, Søren Nipper, Lynn Davie, Elaine McCreary, Greville

56
Rumble, Annette Lorentsen, Judith Van Duren, Gary Boyd, Paul Bacsich, Stephen Ehrmann,
and Norman Coombs.

NordData 89 in Copenhagen
Copenhagen. The capital of Denmark. Arguably the most important city throughout
Norway’s history. At least between 1380 and 1814, when our two countries were unified. For
many years, Copenhagen international airport was my gateway to the world.

Joined my older cousin Stein on my first visit in 1973. Lodged in the fashionable apartment
of an elderly couple he knew from his upbringing in the city. Shocked that they drank the
bitter liquor, Gammel Dansk, with Sunday breakfast and ended the meal with cigars.

In June, we took the overnight ferry from

Oslo to Copenhagen with our two-year-old
son. A recommendable journey along the
beautiful Oslo fjord. Passed the narrow strait
of Drøbak where two torpedoes from
Oscarsborg fortress sank Blücher. The
German warship that led a flotilla into the
Oslo fjord on the night of April 8th, 1940, to
seize the Norwegian capital.

Stayed in our friend Sidsel’s Klampenborg

Photo. Erik Bruhn hands over the ckeck for the best
presentation
apartment just north of Copenhagen. Took
the kid to the aquarium and the nice
Dyrehavsbakken park nearby. Went to the
conference located at the Danish Technical
University and enjoyed the jazz parade
organized by Leonardo Pedersen's
Jazzkapell on the campus lawn.

Celebrated with a good bottle of wine after I received the Best Presentation Award for Trends
in international electronic distance education at the NordData 89 conference. The picture
shows the valuable moment when Erik Bruhn, editor of the Nordic journal Data,
congratulated me and handed over the prize along with a NOK 15,000 check.

Educational programs on local cable TV channels

During the 1980s, there was a growing interest in local TV channels distributed via cable TV.
More and more households were connected. In 1984, NFL (Norske Fjernsynsselskapers
Landsforbund) was established as an association for local TV channels. Most members were
local and regional newspapers. Our local channel, ABTV (Asker og Bærum Lokal-TV) was
one of the first. Started regular programming around 1986. The channels struggled financially
since TV commercials were not allowed in Norway until 1991. They had limited resources to

57
produce in-house content and scarce finances to buy content elsewhere. Many were interested
if you could offer free content of general interest.

In this environment, I produced six half-hour TV programmes as supplementary content to

NKI's online course Introduction to ICT. All programs were shown several times on many of
the local channels.

Screenshots from the six instructional videos

The first programme was initiated by a notice I read in Computerworld Norway. Rumours
indicated that Bill Gates should join Microsoft's delegation at an ICT fair at Info-Rama
outside Oslo. So, I phoned Microsoft's Nordic headquarter in Stockholm and asked if I could
book an interview with him for educational TV.

Too my surprise, Bill agreed. Which made me realize that we can achieve much if we dare to
ask.

In the second program, I introduced telecommunication trends, ISDN, and new value-added
services. The program also included a video on ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network)
produced by the Norwegian Telecom and an overview of value-added services presented by
Anders Fongen.

The third video included Torstein Rekkedal, Henny Lindland, and me talking about our
online education experiences. The remaining three programs included interviews with
Norwegian ICT celebrities.

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Helge Seip focused on ICT and privacy issues. He was an influential Norwegian Politician
for many years. In 1980, he was appointed as the first director of the Norwegian Data
Inspectorate. From 1989 to 1995, he worked as Data Protection Commissioner for the
Council of Europe.

Kristen Nygaard concentrated on his work with Ole Johan Dahl when they invented object-
oriented programming and developed the programming language Simula in the 1960s.

Lars Monrad-Krohn talked about microcomputers and his work as a serial ICT entrepreneur.
The program also showed Apple's video Knowledge Navigator which gave an impressive
prediction of how personal computing works today.

Ups and downs at the end of the decade

On the international scene, it was disturbing to see the huge student led protests at Tiananmen
Square in Beijing. We followed the development from the protests started on April 15 until it
was forcibly suppressed on June 4 when the People's Liberation Army occupied central parts
of Beijing.

We were much more excited to see the symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall in November. After
weeks of civil unrest, the East German government sent out a press release on November 9.
The travel ban for GDR citizens was lifted and all citizens could visit West Germany and
West Berlin. This initiated a wave of optimism for the future of Europe.

Privately, we were happy as parents and delighted to be pregnant again. Three times in two
years. Devastated by three subsequent miscarriages. Uneasy with the prospect that Stian
could grow up without siblings.

1989 minutes
• January 23. Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali died at the age of eighty-four.
• February 14. Ayatollah Khomeini announces a fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
• March 24. Exxon Valdez spilled a huge amount of oil off Alaska.
• April 2. Yassir Arafat became Palestine president.
• April 7. Forty-two lost their lives when a Soviet nuclear submarine sank and caught fire
off the Norwegian island Bjørnøya.
• June 1. The first ever papal visit to Norway.
• June 3. Ayatollah Khomeini, Iranian head of state, died.
• October 9. First Sami Parliament opened.
• October 11. Norwegian scholar Trygve Haavelmo received the Nobel Prize in
Economics.
• December 22. Nicolae Ceausescu, General secretary of the Romanian Communist Party,
was overthrown and executed with his wife December 25.
• December 29. Vaclav Havel became president of Czechoslovakia.

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Nine 1989 publications

1. Paulsen, M. F. 1989. EKKO: A virtual school. In Mindweave: Communication,

Computers, and Distance Education, eds. R. Mason and A. Kaye, 201-7. Oxford:
Pergamon Press.
2. Rekkedal, T. and M. F. Paulsen. 1989. Computer conferencing in distance education:
Status and trends. European Journal of Education, 24(1):61-72.
3. Paulsen, M. F. and T. Rekkedal. 1989. Experiences with the EKKO computer-
conferencing system at NKI. Epistolodidaktika, the European Journal of Distance
Education, 1989(1):66-76.
4. Paulsen, M. F. 1989. En Virtuell Skole: Del I, Fundamentet i EKKO-prosjektet.
Bekkestua: NKI Forlaget. Sider: 80.
5. Paulsen, M. F. 1989. En Virtuell Skole: Del II, Erfaringer fra EKKO-prosjektet.
Bekkestua: NKI Forlaget. Sider: 149.
6. Paulsen, M. F. 1989. Det elektroniske universitet kjenner ingen grenser. Datatid,
11(1):40-42.
7. Paulsen, M. F. 1989. Den elektroniske høgskolen. Datatid, 11(2):60-67.
8. Johnsen, B. and M. F. Paulsen. 1989. Datateknologi i fjernundervisning -
voksenopplæring uten grenser. Nytt om Data i Skolen, 1989(1):3-7.
9. Paulsen, M. F. 1989. Elektronisk fjernundervisning. DND-nytt, 5(5):24-25.

One 1989 presentation in the UK

MTEDE, Milton Keynes 1989: EKKO – Experiences.

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Reflections in a dire, Covid dominated 2020
From the cursor moment in 2020, it was devastating to see the latest development in the US.
School shootings. The opioid crisis. The growing political divide. The echo chambers and
conspiracy theories flourishing in social media. Twitter and Facebook’s decisions to flag or
hide fraudulent and harmful posts from President Trump. His chaotic presidency attacking
decency, allies, science, media, elections, and the legal system. His frightening
mismanagement of the corona pandemic.

Remembered the first time I was approached and quoted by a national daily newspaper
(Arbeiderbladet, November 1988) as an ICT expert. About computer virus. When I had no
idea about the pandemic that loomed ahead.

The COVID-19 virus defined 2020 and changed

most people’s lives. On January 30, the World
Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of
the disease as a public health emergency of
international concern. On March 12, the Norwegian
government announced that all schools,
kindergartens, and other educational institutions
should close. The next day, the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs advised against international travels that were
not strictly necessary.

Worldwide, the pandemic took nearly two million

lives in nine months. Isolated us from family and
friends. Made people work from home. Shut down
businesses, sports, and culture activities.

Isolating and working from the island Øya in the

Norwegian town of Kragerø, I found comfort and
distraction by renovating our old fisherman’s house
and researching my online education archives.
Realized that print was more durable than my
Facsimile of article in Arbeiderbladet November outdated floppy disks from the 1980s. Found it
19, 1988.
challenging to meet family and assist next of kin
with dire need for help and medical care. Stopped hugging and shaking hands. The first year
of my adult life I did not travel abroad. The ICDE, EDEN, and OEB conferences I used to
attend went virtual. The Tokyo summer Olympics were postponed for at least a year.

Kragerø Rotary Club hosted the only cultural event I attended. A concert with one of the
world’s bestselling crime writers. A Norwegian author translated into fifty languages.
Vocalist and songwriter for the Norwegian rock band Di Derre. An excellent storyteller, but
Jo Nesbø’s on-stage anecdotes and song lyrics touched me more than his novels.
Unfortunately, so hard to appreciate for all my friends who don't speak Norwegian. But
hopefully understand me as I struggle with the English language in these anecdotes.

But challenging times spur innovations. Performing artists staged virtual events. Bands and
orchestras started playing virtually together from separate locations. Athletics introduced

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digital lights (pace setters) instead of human rabbits to chase records. E-sport saw new
opportunities. Magnus Carlsen, the incredible Norwegian World Chess Champion,
transformed chess with his virtual chess tournaments.

The pandemic prompted Norwegian schools and universities to substitute traditional teaching
with online education. For a while, online education was the standard and face-to-face
education the exception. I was privileged to head NooA, a completely online school with no
need for offices and classrooms. Fortunate to receive a fair share of the online education
contingency funding the Norwegian government made available for people who were laid off
or furloughed during the pandemic.

Many institutions and teachers made an impressive effort to go online and even the most
ardent antagonists of ICT realised that online education could work. Many noteworthy
initiatives promoted and shared resources, experiences, and advice from established online
education communities. Many course providers decided to substitute their face-to-face
seminars with free webinars. A fine offer in times of crisis, but hardly a sustainable solution.

Access to PCs and modems was the greatest obstacle for online education in the 1980s. I
wonder why access to online education technology did not seem to be an issue in Norway
anymore. Is it so that all kids and adults had access to PCs and the Internet in 2020?

Teams, Skype, and Zoom suddenly became omnipresent communication tools. Personally, I
gave an October presentation at a webinar organized by FuN and Utdanning.no. Then two
webinar sessions for online teachers in the Sami language in November. Worried that most of
the new online education activities seemed to replicate classroom teaching. That too many
people started to believe that online education is equivalent to webinars. A perception that
disregards decades of experiences and so many of the innovative online education
developments that are addressed in my online education chronicle.

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Introducing the optimistic 1990s
The second book in My Online Education World compiles anecdotes
from the optimistic 1990s. Anecdotes chronicled in isolation and
distress during 2021. The decade for early adaptors of online
education on the web. A decade of amazing innovations. The decade
that introduced PCs with colour- and graphic interfaces. New
Internet services opened the world, and the web brought it all
together. Search engines provided immediate access to
mindboggling sources of information. Online journals, early web-
based learning management systems, digital cameras, and personal
digital assistants (PDAs). And mobile phones that changed our lives.

My life accelerated in the 1990s. Two formative years as a graduate student in the US.
Establishing DEOS as one of the world’s first online journals at the American Center for the
Study of Distance Education. Struggling with my doctoral dissertation Teaching Techniques
for Computer-mediated Communication. Visiting Venezuela, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.
Focusing on children and parenthood.

Interesting work with the online journals I edited. Deosnews, Norwaves, and Nettskoleavisen.
Publications that resulted in growing networks and welcome exposure in media.

Even though Norway voted against EU membership, the EEA treaty opened many European
doors. I had several trips to Brussels and was engaged by the EU Commission as Project
Reviewer for the Directorate- General XIII on Telecommunications, Information Market, and
Exploitation Research. EU funded projects and online education work provided welcome
opportunities to visit: Belgium, the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Spain,
and Portugal.

A decade with growing Norwegian self-confidence. The very successful Lillehammer Winter
Olympics gave the nation a tremendous boost and inspiration for young athletes in a wide
range of sports.

Jostein Gaarder wrote Sofie’s World. A novel about a teenager entering the history of
philosophy. The English translation of the novel was reported to be the world’s best-selling
book in 1995. Probably an inspiration for the two internationally renowned Norwegian
authors Jo Nesbø and Karl Ove Knausgård, who both wrote their first novels later in the
decade.

A decade of huge economic growth in Norway propelled by oil drilling in the North Sea.
Hence, in 1990, the government established the Petroleum Fund to manage surplus wealth
from the Norwegian petroleum sector. The fund was a remarkable success, and the growth
introduced a debate about the necessity for budgetary rules concerning the usage of capital
gains from the fund.

The healthy economy allowed people and businesses to invest in PCs and internet services.
Making the technology more widespread and available in Norway than most comparable
countries. A fact that helped Norway become a world leader in online education.

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